That’s the startling opener to Alex Limkin’s column “Flashes of Light,” which is all about staying alive after war.

Limkin, an Iraq War veteran, took a trip with Outward Bound. The wilderness organization leads vets through the backcountry for free. It’s part of an effort to help people cope with post-traumatic stress.

Staying alive after war

By Alex E. Limkin

An average of 18 veterans commit suicide each day. The source for this statistic is not some obscure group with an anti-war agenda but an organization that probably knows something about the rate at which veterans are killing themselves—the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Would we have known the name Benjamin Colton Barnes if he hadn’t killed someone else before rushing to his own death in Mount Rainier National Park on New Year’s Day? Or would he have been just another young Iraq War veteran on a suicide trajectory?

Columnist Alex Limkin, also a vet, asks this questionin his column From the Foxhole.

A veteran commits suicide every 80 minutes, according to a study published in November. It also indicates military suicides have been on the rise since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Another broken soldier

By Alex E. Limkin

The only reason the death of this Iraq War veteran has attracted such attention is that he did not go alone. Had Barnes simply headed off into the frozen wilderness to die, his story would have been unexceptional. After all, scores of returning veterans, traumatized and afflicted, have committed suicide over the last decade.